Sunday, April 2, 2017

Almost one in four 2012 Obama white working-class voters defected from the Democrats in 2016. This data has only recently become available-NY Times, 3/28/17. Note to NY Times: Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania is "in the heart of the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania"

The
turnout was slightly and consistently more favorable for Mr. Trump
across all three states. But the turnout edge was small; in one of the
closest elections in American history, it might not have represented his
margin of victory.

A More Favorable Electorate for Trump

In
general, white and Hispanic voters roughly matched expectations of
voter share or made up a slightly larger share of the electorate than
expected, while black voters made up a smaller share....

This
was mainly a result of higher white and Hispanic turnout; black turnout
was roughly in line with our pre-election expectations.On average,
white and Hispanic turnout was 4 percent higher than we expected, while
black turnout was 1 percent lower than expected.

Whether
black turnout was “disappointing” or “poor” is a matter of perspective.
It was consistent with our pre-election models, but it was
significantly lower than it was four or eight years ago, when Mr. Obama
galvanized record black turnout.

Our
pre-election estimates did not anticipate that black turnout would stay
at such elevated levels, since African-Americans still had a weaker
track record of voting in midterm and primary elections when President
Obama was not on the ballot.

Ultimately,
black turnout was roughly as we expected it. It looks as if black
turnout was weak mostly in comparison with the stronger turnout among
white and Hispanic voters.

This
was part of a broader national pattern. Mr. Trump’s turnout edge was
nonexistent or reversed in states with a large Hispanic population and a
small black population, like Arizona. His turnout advantage was largest
in states with a large black population and few Hispanic voters, like
North Carolina.

What was consistent across most states, however, was higher-than-expected white turnout.

For
this reason alone, it’s hard to argue that turnout was responsible for
the preponderance of Mr. Trump’s gains among white voters. The turnout
among young and white Democratic voters was quite strong.

But
the turnout was generally stronger among the likeliest white Trump
supporters than among the likeliest white Clinton supporters.

Over
all, the turnout among white voters with a greater than 80 percent
chance of supporting Mr. Trump was 7 percent higher than expected, while
the turnout was 4 percent higher among white voters with greater than
an 80 percent chance of supporting Mrs. Clinton.

Only a Modest Effect

So
how much did turnout contribute to Mr. Trump’s victory? As the party
registration numbers and turnout figures by race imply, just a bit. But
Mr. Trump won the election by just a bit — by only 0.7 percentage points
in Pennsylvania, for example.

We
estimated the presidential vote of every registered voter, based on our
pre-election polls, voter file data and the results of every precinct.
With these individual-level estimates of vote choice, it’s easy to
assess how the election might have gone differently with a different
electorate.

These
estimates suggest that turnout improved Mr. Trump’s standing by a
modest margin compared with pre-election expectations. If the turnout
had gone exactly as we thought it would, the election would have been
extremely close. But by this measure, Mrs. Clinton still would have lost
both Florida and Pennsylvania — albeit very narrowly.

It’s
important to note that this is just one analysis, based on one set of
data. Over the coming months or years, other analysts may conclude that
the effect of turnout was larger or smaller than our estimates suggest.
Their conclusions could differ if, for instance, their pre-election
models showed a different electorate (say, they expected another big
2012-like turnout among black voters), or if their polling data shows
that the people who voted were more or less supportive of Mr. Trump
compared with those who stayed home.

Even
so, it would surprise me if other analysts reach a fundamentally
different conclusion, based on interviews with pollsters and data
analysts from both parties. In such a high-turnout election, it’s
difficult for the voting electorate to be vastly different than
expected.

For
comparison, consider just how much worse Mrs. Clinton would have done
with the 2014 electorate. Young, nonwhite and Democratic voters did not
turn out in large numbers that year, and Mrs. Clinton would have
probably lost Florida and Pennsylvania by a wide margin. Her losses
would have been smaller in North Carolina, perhaps because the state had
such a competitive Senate race in 2014.

Based
on these data, Democrats are right to blame many of their midterm
election losses on weak turnout. They’re on far shakier ground if they
complain about the turnout last November.

This
doesn’t mean that Democrats can’t improve on turnout. If the turnout
had been as good for Mrs. Clinton as it was for Mr. Trump, she would
have won by our analysis. But even then, she would have only scratched
by.

Did
8,000 of Mr. Obama’s supporters stay home? No. There were 5,995
registered voters who voted in 2012, remain registered in Schuylkill
County, and stayed home in 2016.

And
there’s no way these 2016 drop-off voters were all Obama supporters.
There were 2,680 registered Democrats, 2,629 registered Republicans and
686 who were unaffiliated or registered with a different party. This is a
place where registered Democrats often vote Republican in presidential
elections, so Mr. Obama’s standing among these voters was most likely
even lower."...

(continuing): "Were
they mostly supporters of Bernie Sanders? Unlikely: He was popular
among the young, but 67 percent of the 2016 drop-off voters were over
age 45, and 35 percent were over age 65. Just 5 percent voted in the
Democratic primary in 2016, and 7 percent voted in the Republican
primary.

Is
it possible that the registered Democrats who turned out were Trump
supporters, and that the Democrats who stayed home were likelier to be
supporters of Mrs. Clinton? Perhaps, but our polling suggests the
opposite. In our pre-electionUpshot/Sienapolls, voters were likelier than nonvoters to support their party’s nominee.

[Ed. note: This being the case, why wasn't it urgently addressed and treated as big news during the campaigns? Hillary could've adjusted her campaign accordingly.]

(continuing): "The
postelection survey data tells a similar story: Mrs. Clinton won Mr.
Obama’s white-working class supporters by a margin of only 78 percent to
18 percent against Mr. Trump, according to the Cooperative
Congressional Election Study.

In
the Midwestern battleground states and Pennsylvania, Mrs. Clinton had
an advantage of 76 percent to 20 percent among white working-class Obama
voters.

Over all, the national polls missed the result by
only a few points: Hillary Clinton is on track to win the popular vote
by around 1.5 percentage points, not especially far from her roughly
four-point lead in an average of national polls.

Few saw it coming. Mrs. Clinton led in nearly every high-quality survey of Minnesota, Maine, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
It was her modest but consistent edge in those states and others that
led analysts to project that she had an excellent chance at victory.
This includes our poll-based forecast,
which gave Mrs. Clinton an 85 percent chance to win, alongside those
from other organizations, which put Mrs. Clinton's chances at between 71
percent at FiveThirtyEight and greater than 99 percent at the Princeton Election Consortium.

Her campaign, with its own polling, concluded the
same thing. She barely even campaigned in Maine, Wisconsin or
Minnesota, and visited Michigan only in the last week of the race.

All of these states have something in common:
They have a large number of white voters without a college degree. Mr.
Trump also outperformed the polls in other mostly white and rural
states, whether Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri or Indiana.

The states with a large number of white
working-class voters tend to be somewhat less populous than the more
diverse and well-educated states along the coasts. A result is that the
state polling averages were off by more than usual, even though the
national numbers weren’t far off.

Unfortunately a lot of those in positions of power seem to be in
denial of those facts. Then there are those who are uninterested in why.
Hillary was a terrible candidate, and at least some senior Dems seem to
be willing to ask how they can do better. Too many on the Republican
side seem to be oblivious that Trump did better than generic Republican,
and what the implications of that are. I am dubious that any other
candidate in the primaries could have done better than Donald Trump,
mostly because he had a brand independent of that of the Republican
party.

The Upshot reached this conclusion by
reviewing actual voter files, comparing those to The Upshot's
pre-election turnout projections in Florida, Pennsylvania and North
Carolina. The turnout patterns in these three states are representative
of broader trends throughout the nation, according to the analysis."